All the Things

I realized when I went to write this post that I hadn't transferred pictures from my phone to my computer since Halloween.  Which means it's been a full month.  I guess that just proves the fact that November isn't that exciting or photo-worthy most of the time.  So I guess what was going to be a general update about Thanksgiving is going to be a photo catch up post, too.

Going all the way back to Honey's long weekend with us at the very beginning of the month, this pic is from when she froze in the yard and I didn't realize until I turned around that there were deer out.  She stared them down as long as she could and would not move!  You can just see the deer butt in the tree clearing.

She was clearly pretty relaxed with me.  This was one of her more entertaining naps on my leg.  Sweet girl.

The boys are iffy on having her again because of the allergy issue--and the fact that she can get a little stinky.  This time around she rolled in poop in the yard (not sure if it was hers from her previous visit or another animal), which was not really fun.  But I like being a safe place for her where she feels comfortable.  I ended up seeing her for a few minutes again a couple weeks ago when Lori and Kevin took a day trip and needed her to get fed.  She was so happy to see me!  I only stayed long enough to let her out, feed her, and give her some pets, but it was nice.  She's so adorable.

The fall colors had a late but swift exit shortly after Halloween thanks to some windy and rainy weather.  The colors generally weren't great this year--nice pockets but generally a bit in the yellow-green-brown range.  Some leaves seemed to hang in extra long--in fact, our front tree was very slow to lose them and only really started changing about a week before Thanksgiving.  Then they slowly started dropping, and by the time we got back from Thanksgiving it was almost bare, presumably thanks again to high winds.  But I did capture this lovely tree around the corner on one of my early month walks.
 

This was a mum I got cheap from Aldi.  I was obsessed with the pattern and colors and figured I needed one more plant to get me through November, since my other plants had crapped out.  I ended up bringing this one in when the super cold weather hit, and it's only now starting to die off a bit.  I almost want to plant it somewhere in the yard to see if it could come back next year, but not sure the weather will cooperate.

I've had some lovely sunset walks on the evenings I've been able to get out before dark.  Walking is tough this time of year because of the cold and early darkness, but I did manage to log 13 workouts in November to get my monthly badge on my watch.  I've gotten good at bundling up and getting in a quick mile, but there were a couple days in between the very dreary November weather where I logged a couple miles.  That was nice!

On November 10th, we woke up to this craziness.  I don't remember a solid snow quite that early in a while.  I think we had one in 2019, but most years lately we've practically made it to Christmas without significant snow.  This was a solid coating and it covered everything.  The trees were gorgeous.  We've had a few decent snowfalls so far, actually.  None stick around for more than a few days, but it has helped me get in Christmas mode a bit.

These were survivors from my year-end cleanup.  I finally cleared off a bunch of porch plants and my garden after that snowfall came with a hefty freeze and killed all but a couple things.  Those marigolds entertained me to no end.  Each one was a little different in its coloring.  And those potatoes came from my garden!  I found a lone sprouting potato in my pantry during the summer that must have fallen out of the bag.  I figured I'd plant it for fun and see what happened.  It grew a tall green shoot, and when I cleaned out the garden, I pulled it up and found those two potatoes plus a bunch of tiny baby potatoes.  I feel like the darker one was the original, but I'm not sure because it was pretty shriveled when I planted it.  A couple days later I was walking out there and saw something sticking out of the ground, and it was an even bigger one that didn't come up with the roots.  They sadly turned green before I could do anything with them, but it was cool to know I could do that!

On my walk a couple weeks ago, I looked over and saw a squirrel that I swear must be the offspring of the white squirrel I was obsessed with last year.  I'd been a bit sad to not see it this year, and assumed it had passed away.  But this one was in the same area where I always saw that one, and this one was mostly white except for the tip of the tail and a stripe across the shoulders.  I wish I could have gotten a better picture, but it was skittish and this was as good as it got.  But it made me happy to think the white squirrel lives on in some way.

For years I've been trying to figure out how to do a Christmas light display beyond the "tree" I string up on the porch wall with a leftover 2x4, some cup hooks, and a siding hook.  Our only outlet is right under the porch window, so anything not against the wall involves cords being in the way.  I finally decided it might be possible to run an extension cord from the outlet along the wall, tape it under the door, and then feed it off the porch to the flower bed.  And then I saw a post about a couple pop-up lighted trees at Aldi that everyone really seemed to like.  But I kept not seeing them in the store.  Then a couple weeks ago I went in early one Wednesday to get these sneaker boots I was eyeing up, and they had the trees!  I decided to bite the bullet and give it a try for $20.  I decided to put them up just before Thanksgiving before the weather got cold, just in case the setup wasn't quite as quick and easy as I was hoping.  Thankfully it wasn't too bad (although I was thankful it was as warm as it was nonetheless), and they turned out so cute!
 

I figured I'd do future me a favor and put out my wall tree, too.  It was only a few days before Thanksgiving (and a late one at that), and saving myself the 15 minutes of pulling all of that out in the middle of indoor Christmas decorating sounded like a good idea.  It was.

I'm so happy to have some additional lights, and it's nice to know that setup works in case we ever want to enhance it further.  I have the extension cord in a plastic container sealed with electrical tape.  We'll see how that goes, but I could probably plug a couple more things in at some point.

I also had an evening to get my small tree up.  This year is the sports theme, and it's so sweet to see all the sports represented--tons of basketball, baseball, and hockey, and a couple others as well.  And the ornaments belong to all four of us, so it's such a fun representation of our evolution--from Craig and me in our younger days, to being married, and now with two sports-minded kids.  Once again, it was a good call to get that one out of the way ahead of time.

The days before Thanksgiving were pretty busy.  Jacob's basketball season has been ramping up, and he's doing well with his leg.  But we're spending a lot of time running him around to practice or training or shooting, and I felt like the whole week before was a bit of a blur between making Thanksgiving plans and figuring out how to take care of all the family obligations, too.  As I mentioned, we almost had to host, but thankfully my mom was willing to have Craig's parents over, with the understanding that I would come in early and do the prep with her.  On Tuesday night I got through some running around and then had to come home and bake my apple pie.  Wednesday morning Carter had a GI appointment, so I got up early to bake Jacob's biscuits for both stops, because I needed to come back home from the appointment and get on the road.  The appointment went well.  They were very happy with his progress.  He's going to wean off the omeprazole he went on in September and aim toward getting off the mesalamine in a few months once they're comfortable with where his infusion levels are.  He's stretched out to eight weeks currently, but they did want us to run and get a blood draw after the appointment to check where they stand now, a few weeks before the next infusion.  If they're low they'll either up the dose or bring us back to six weeks.  But he's doing really well with weight gain and remaining symptom-free.  He did have one bowel movement with blood a couple days before the appointment, but it didn't happen again and they figure it was just his body fighting something off.  That can cause a short flare.  Sure enough, he does have a bit of a nasty cold right now.  He was stuffy Thanksgiving night, but we were near a dog so we figured it could be that.  But by Saturday it was clear it was more, and by Sunday we did a test to rule out COVID and flu.  Who knows how long it might last with being immune-compromised, but hopefully he'll feel better soon and won't have to miss much school.

After the blood draw and another trip out to get lunch and gas, I got on the road.  I hadn't eaten anything all day because I was rushing around to get ready to leave, so it was nice to finally eat my lunch as I drove.  I did hit some awful rain and wind, but it was an otherwise typical drive to Buffalo.  My mom and I got started on the turkey, rinsing it out and removing the organs.  We also worked on the stuffing, and I peeled the potatoes.  Those steps ended up being pretty quick and easy, and I had the rest of the afternoon to hang out with my parents, which was nice.  We grabbed dinner at Ted's, a Buffalo favorite, during which it started to snow.  It was windy and wet, and the snow just made it worse.  The boys came in later that night after Jacob's media day for basketball.

We woke up to a couple inches of snow in the morning.  Better for Christmas morning than Thanksgiving, but aside from making pavement a slippery mess, it wasn't bad.  The roads were fine, but the church parking lot was a bit rough.  Church was nice, and then we headed home to start prepping the meal.  My mom and I tag-teamed everything, and we were ready to eat shortly after Craig's parents arrived.  We had a really nice meal--pleasant conversation, good food, and no drama.  Of course, the dads and their preference for alcohol isn't ideal, but we steered away from politics and it turned out really nice.  It was refreshing to have a quiet meal and be able to talk to Craig's parents and hear his dad's stories, after two straight Thanksgivings where he wasn't welcome and we were outnumbered by people outside of the immediate family.  I think they appreciated being welcomed somewhere for a change.

We did get this nice picture at my dad's suggestion:

We probably should have had them take one with my parents, too.  Darn it.

After we ate and chatted for a bit, we had to get going to stop #2.  Yes, we had a stop #2.  It turned out that Craig's brother's family had found a house to move into ahead of Craig's parents moving in a few weeks.  I think they're renting at the moment and in the process of trying to get a mortgage to buy it.  It's smaller and needs some work, but it's not bad.  They still managed to fit the six of them, her parents, one significant other, two friends, and us.  Their Dominican friend was a little overzealous with greeting and talking to the boys, which didn't thrill me.  She's very huggy and over-the-top, and while in the past I've been able to brush it off, this time it felt weird.  The whole experience was a bit odd, to be honest.  Craig's brother reached out last week to invite us for Thanksgiving, and with it came a whole slew of revelations about a lot of things--including how sick he'd actually been right before the election and how hurt he was his own mother didn't visit him.  However, she didn't know how sick he was, and neither did we, but yet it feels like we somehow let him down.  Craig's mom wasn't thrilled that we accepted their invitation, but again, we're not here to shut anyone out.  Obviously we're stuck in the middle and it sucks to have either side complaining to us about the other.  They've both made some bad choices and said and done hurtful things.  We don't want to be in the middle.  It feels like we're now children of divorce, except instead of it being two parents, it's a sibling vs. parents.  We don't really want to do separate holidays with each, but we may not have a choice.  Christmas could be a bit complicated.  I do wish they'd go see a mediator or something, but it could be a long road before they can ever willingly be in one another's presence.      

We came home relatively early (for us) on Thanksgiving night.  Thankfully the weather cooperated and the snow stayed south.  Jacob had an early morning scrimmage on the other side of the city first thing in the morning, which was complicated by Craig's van window breaking--not the glass, but the opening mechanism, which meant he had to drive home from dropping Jacob off with the cold and snow coming in!  I drove him out to the game after that and stayed to watch the back-to-back scrimmages.  Jacob is still trying to find his groove, but did get a couple threes.  The first real game is this week!  When we got home, I finally got going on undecorating from fall and starting to pull up the Christmas stuff.  I managed to place most of the easy stuff by the time I went to bed Friday, along with just getting the big tree up (but undecorated).  On Saturday I didn't really get moving until after noon, but I managed to get everything else placed by about dinner time (with a few breaks including a walk!), and then spent the entire evening decorating the tree.  It was nice to wake up today knowing that was all done and I just had some cleanup and a couple other small things to do.  I'm happy with how it all turned out.

Now it's on to gift buying and trying to soak up all the joy of the holiday season before things get crazy.  But of course, now Carter has a cold and Jacob will probably freak out about catching it, basketball is starting, Craig's work is crazy and mine is ramping back up, and Christmas is only about 23 days away, if we count Christmas Eve.  I've bought a handful of gifts but definitely have more work to do!  I know time is going to FLY...and now, on to December!